A Dark Contemplation
by Cathamaria
Summary: A very tragic... angsty... Spinel & Ruby Moon fanfic... Eriol disappears one evening to contemplate something in the rain... but he does not return. Spinel’s power grows weary from searching, and Ruby, ailed by a human illness, can do nothing to help fi


**A Dark Contemplation**

_A very tragic... angsty... Spinel & Ruby Moon fanfic... Eriol disappears one evening to contemplate something in the rain... but he does not return. Spinel's power grows weary from searching, and Ruby, ailed by a human illness, can do nothing to help find her Master. What has happened to Eriol? And what does it all have to do with dark states of mind and twisted love?_

Disclaimer: I don't own CardCaptor Sakura, or the right to distort any of their character images... I didn't kill Hiiragizawa Eriol.

Dedicated to: Everyone who reviewed 'Even After, I'll Love You Again'... Arigatou minna!

Author's notes: I was writing one of my other CCS fics, and now I've found myself helplessly addicted to using Ruby and Spinel's more composed, England-reared side, as opposed to the sugar-hyper-activity I see in a lot of fanfics...

These chapters will be relatively short, seeing as I come and go from writing this type of fic. I'm hoping to finish this one before November.

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**Chapter I: He Vanished in the Rain**

Ruby Moon stood facing out the tall glass window of Eriol's library.

Her Master had left four nights ago and had not yet come home. Eriol's chair was empty; only the faint traces of his aura remained where the magician of Clow had been seated so many times before. The silence was haunting, and Ruby did not stop looking out the window. She was waiting. She twirled the stem of the crystal glass between her fingers, careless as the dark contents sloshed over the rim and onto her gloved hand.

The door opened behind her, and Ruby Moon turned around. "Any luck?" she asked softly of the rain-soaked Spinel Sun. He shook his head, shrugged the water listlessly from his wings, and lay himself down on the carpet in front of the fireplace. The silence hung as it had for days; both Guardians would not speak of their Master's fate. Ruby Moon had been ill for months now, and in her weakened state she could not leave the mansion. Instead, each morning for four days now, Spinel left in search of Eriol, and for four days now, he'd returned in late evening with no more knowledge of his Master's whereabouts.

Outside it was still raining.

Ruby continued to watch the rain fall endlessly, pattering against the glass and drumming on the rooftops.

Eriol Hiiragizawa vanished without a trace on the thirteenth of April, and now it was the seventeenth, and not a word had Ruby or Spinel heard from him. They could not feel the presence of his aura near, and so they could not find him. They were worried, but they knew there was nothing they could do. Ruby was ill and Spinel's powers were growing fatigued.

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"Where are you going, Master Eriol?" Spinel asked as he watched the magician take up his cloak in the midst of a spring storm.

"Out to contemplate," Eriol replied simply. "I will not be gone long, I suppose." Ruby listened from the stairwell that lead to her quarters. That was all Hiiragizawa said to either Guardian before he disappeared into the rain. And he never came back.

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The only movement in the library was when Ruby, after emptying her crystal glass of its contents, went to splash another measure of the dark wine into it. She returned to the window, and because could not stand the silence, she spoke. "Of what, perhaps, I wonder has Eriol-san gone to contemplate... since he's been gone so long."

"Nonsense," Spinel replied, taking up a book from one of the dusty shelves. "You know exactly what's been ailing his conscience."

"Something worse than what's been ailing me, I know," she whispered hoarsely as a bout of coughing erupted from her lungs. The glass she had been holding tumbled to the floor and crushed into shards of crystal, its contents creating crimson puddles on the hardwood floor. Ruby collapsed against the cushioned window sill and struggled for some moments to regain herself. Spinel was swift on his paws to help his sister, and he pulled a chair up to the window for Ruby to sit.

"You shouldn't be standing in your state," he scolded. Ruby said nothing, and Spinel went to fetch another glass. Whatever the substance, suspiciously resembling the colour and texture of a fine Bordeaux vintage, Eriol had told Ruby to drink it... in hopes of calming her ailment and perhaps, Spinel thought reluctantly, grievingly, stretching out whatever remainder of her life she had. "Typical of you," he teased gently, "to go off and catch yourself a human disease."

"I cannot help that I was created in human form. It is not my fault I've taken upon human emotion, human fragility, and human weakness," she replied.

"Eriol-san was not thinking when he created you, then."

"Oh, he was thinking," Ruby answered softly. "In fact, he was thinking too much. He did not realize what trouble he would cause us, trying to make us aware that though we were created from magic, and though we bear power from magic, we are still creatures of this living world. We are susceptible to all that humans and their animal companions are." She breathed in deeply as she felt another spasm of coughing try to rise. She suppressed it and continued. "Even you, Spinel, have fallen once or twice to that strange condition humans refer to as rabies..."

"Ah, true," Spinel conceded.

"But it is no physical ailment that troubles the Master... it is something weighing on his mind... his heart... his conscience."

"It is too soon to question his sanity, Ruby Moon. But though we—you were created after the human form, neither of us can understand nor make any sense of that one human emotion they call love... It was what brought Eriol-san to his state." Ruby sat silently, thinking, remembering.

"Eriol-san was engaged to Mizuki when he met Daidouji, wasn't he?" she asked almost absentmindedly. "It is what I cannot understand. How can a human fall in love once, swear his loyalty, and then meet another whom could compel him to turn his back upon the first?" She stared into the dark liquid in her glass, watching her reflection ripple as she moved her hand.

"It is just a matter of loving one more than the other..." Spinel returned to the fireplace. 'And in this case, it is a matter of two souls in the same being, both loving a different person,' he thought silently. "He's been fighting to come to terms with his own emotions for far too long... Do you think perhaps, he will heed to them recklessly?" Spinel asked almost rhetorically.

"Mizuki-san has already been hurt. She had not spoken to the Master in months. Daidouji... he fell in love with Daidouji when he was in Japan. Why?"

"Eriol is human. Human love is difficult to understand. He will choose one over the other, or have neither, is what I think," Spinel said quietly. 'Although you do not know how much more complicated it really is' he thought. 'It is not Eriol who loves both...' "Let's just hope he hasn't gone and done anything rash..." They were silent as that fear came to dwell upon them. In Eriol's state of mind for these past weeks, they would not doubt something was wrong... And since he had not returned home for days, the worry was much stronger.

When Ruby retired to her room for the night, it was still raining.

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That night the storm grew fierce, and though Ruby lie bound by illness and unknowing of all outside her room, Spinel could hear the wind screaming. The apparently unbecoming conversation with Ruby that evening had in fact left a sick feeling in his stomach. The wind, rapt with fury, continued to scream, as the rain fell heavier with each passing minute. It was cold in the mansion, void of their master magician's presence. Something in Spinel's blood this night told him that Eriol would never return.

The bells struck midnight before Spinel Sun finally gave in to sleep, and the rain gave way.

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"What are you thinking of, Master Eriol?" Spinel asked, looking up from the book he was reading. It was an ancient book, inscribed with incantations and scripts from peoples long since vanished off the Earth. "You seem rather troubled."

"It is always so," Eriol replied. "Sometimes I have to wonder if I am going insane."

Spinel laughed at that. His master insane? Never. Eriol was the reincarnation of Clow Reed. What reason could such a great mind as his have to become unstable? And yet something in Eriol's eyes made him stop and think it through. "Something weighs that heavily upon your soul?"

"Yes, Spinel, yes," Eriol whispered, and added, as if he'd read Spinel's mind, "It is the fact that I am Clow's reincarnate that causes such instability." Spinel looked confused; he closed the book as his master summoned him to listen. "You see, Clow Reed's soul is still a part of me... his heart is still a part of mine... And now it seems we both want our own way in life."

"What do you mean?"

"I did not create you to understand the human emotion of love... It is far too complex for me to duplicate in a magical creation such as yourself..." Eriol placed his staff down on the floor in front of him and proceeded to stare at it, as if examining an artifact he'd never seen before. "You see, Spinel Sun, Clow Reed had a heart... he once loved a woman named Madoushi... but now... see how quickly things change? How easily humans let their emotions run free? Through my being, Clow met a woman named Mizuki Kaho... and his love for this woman overpowered my heart because I had no love of my own."

Spinel let his mind find ways to conceive this foreign idea. "Then you did not enter engagement with Mizuki-san... it was Clow Reed who loved her?"

"Yes... and I could have accepted it... but now... something is different."

"You fell in love." It was not a question, but a statement, for Spinel had read in many books the twisted workings of love and fate. It brought pain and happiness at the same time. It controlled one's mind. It had the power to resurrect the past and destroy the future... Or it could destroy the past and create a new future... There were so many possibilities born of this one emotion, love. "It was the Daidouji woman you met in Japan?"

"That's true, Spinel. Now Clow's spirit will not stand for it... I love another than Mizuki. One of us must make the sacrifice, and he does not want it to be him."

"So what will you do?"

"I don't know," Eriol replied brokenly. "Very few understand what it feels like to fight with oneself... I believe it will drive me insane."

Eriol ceased speaking, then, an uncomfortable silence haunting the library in which they sat. Upstairs, they could hear Ruby coughing, suffering, as a human would, but there was nothing either could do to comfort her. No magic could offer respite from the mysterious ailment that cursed her. So they sat silently. Spinel resumed reading, contemplating the darkness of love... While Eriol was slowly slipping into madness.

When Eriol began to laugh, he had reached the final fall.

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Spinel woke to Ruby's agony, her coughing tearing up the silence like a steel blade... It sounded so cold... so painful... so sick. It pained Spinel that he could do nothing to help her; instead he found himself praying for her. It was something he'd taken up—he couldn't remember when—though as a creation of magic he'd never thought much of religion before. Again he was praying, alone in the dark of his room, while Ruby lay in fate's torture in the room at the very end of the hall.

Soon, she subsided to quiet moans, and Spinel replaced the silver crucifix on its stand. Peace only lasted mere moments, though, as Ruby's scream launched itself through the endless corridors of the mansion. It seemed to echo for eternities.

Spinel leapt from his bed and, in Ruby's room, he met the cold tint of her fear-stricken eyes. Outside the window lay more than blackness.

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Dun dun dun... what happens next? I honestly don't know. I don't even have an outline for this fanfic—it's just written as I go... I'm not even sure what's going to be outside the window... Hehehe. This is my first try at something involving Ruby and Spinel. What'd'ya guys think?

And would "Contemplating Cessation" be a more fitting title?

Read and review, please! Flame me if it's really THAT bad...

LOL,

-- Cat


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